Can pickups shock you?

Ok so I took off all the strings of my guitar and pulled out all of it's guts, because I'm gonna shield it. It's a strat copy sss btw. Anyways I noticed that the cover that goes over the pickups comes right off, the little white plastic thing. I actually screwed the pickups back in without it and it looks like a completly new guitar lol

So my question, do I need the pickup cover? I'm thinking that it's to protect you from electric shock or something? I dont know that's why I'm asking

but isnt it possible to get reverse current from your amp thus resulting in a massive shock lol, if your really unlucky tho that is i guess

ok the thing is that guitar pickups can and do shock you, you are actually grounding the guitar when you touch the strings. However the voltage is usually measured in mV it's so small, so you don't even notice it. In an old tube amp that isn't kept very well it is possible that one in a million times the voltage will reverse and shock you. This usually proves fatal since high currents are involved in tubes however as you say it is a one in a million kinda thing.

Quote by rhythmkillingMo

so either way your pretty much screwed if your amp one day decides "well what a boring day....... lets kill somebody with a thousand volts mwuhahahahaha"

well 5-600 actually. Besides it's the current that kills you, that's why police tazers which use 50,000 volts don't kill people because they have such low current.

EH

"Show me war; show me pestilence; show me the blood-red hands of retribution..."

i wonder if anybody on Ug has died from reverse current at all? maybe we shud make a thread?

Well there was this story I read:A bassist's amp had some circuit issues and kept turning off. He handed his bass to his guitarist who held the bass in his left hand while he had his guitar in his right.Suddenly the bass amp kicked back to life sending a circuit through the bass guitar, though the guitarists left arm. through his heart and out to the guitar, killing him instantly.

Though the caveat was, that it can only kill you if the shock passes through your heart. Its highly unlikely that you'll experience a charge high enough to kill you otherwise

I've developed a complex where everytime I hear a Lamb of God song, I burst out laughing

Hmm well since I had to cut a few wires I'm waiting for my grandpa to drop by so I can use his soldering iron. He also has one of those gadgets that measures voltage, forget what it's called but I'll ask him to bring it over.

BTW I've been shocked by touching the metal prongs from the TV or VCR that was pluged half way pluged into the outlet when I was 8 lol

I think it would be a very good idea if someone makes a sticky about guitar safety, especially for the newcomers to modifying like me.

If you're dumb enough to get shocked modding a guitar (generally a totally passive instrument), then you deserve everything you get. Natural selection FTW Seriously, 99% of amps have a three plug cord, decent grounding and many safety features. The only time I'd be careful was either when you're modding a tube amp, or using gear that's very old and unsafe.

"Everybody, one day will die and be forgotten. Act and behave in a way that will make life interesting and fun. Find a passion, form relationships, don't be afraid to get out there and fuck what everyone else thinks."

Yeah, I've shocked myself when plugging in my 9-volt adapter once. I was sitting in my guitar teachers office, and I brought in my pedal to show him. Went to plug in the adapter and got a tad too close to the prongs. Got a nice like jolt and fell out of the chair. Other than that no real damage.

Pickups produce a current. That is the "output" that we always talk about.

It's not enough to shock you though.

Quote by rhythmkillingMo

but isnt it possible to get reverse current from your amp thus resulting in a massive shock lol, if your really unlucky tho that is i guess

Thats not from touching pickups. Your strings are grounded to your guitar's output. So if your amp has a faulty ground and is sending current the wrong way it's still not going to matter if you have covers on your pickups. You will still get a shock every time you touch your strings.

The windings touch the pole pieces, turning the pickup into an electromagnet. But you're not going to get shocked by it.

Huh? Don't you mean the other way around? An electromagnet is made of a coil wrapped around a block of iron, and when current goes through the coil, the iron turns into a magnet.

With pickups the magnet is a magnet, no matter if there's current in the coils or not. Disturbing the magnetic field sends current through the coil that's wrapped around the magnet (whether it touches or not, btw).

So yeah, a pickup is capable of shocking you, but you won't feel a thing (and I don't mean it'll zap you to death).

keith richards was performing once and he walked up to the mic and his guitar strings over where the pickups are made contact with the mic and he was knocked right on his a*s and they said that his rubber shoes are the only thing that saved him

So wait, if you're messing with your pots and stuff, can you touch those wires and they can't shock you?

We're talking microamps and millivolts here, absolutely nothing to hurt you. Quite honestly, most of this thread was superfluous.

"Everybody, one day will die and be forgotten. Act and behave in a way that will make life interesting and fun. Find a passion, form relationships, don't be afraid to get out there and fuck what everyone else thinks."

guys you can get zapped if you do something just right it happened to Keith Richards

Quote by mercinariesgtr

keith richards was performing once and he walked up to the mic and his guitar strings over where the pickups are made contact with the mic and he was knocked right on his a*s and they said that his rubber shoes are the only thing that saved him

heres a thing i found of exactly what happened, this is from a site where someone was talking about a video of it, i also read about it in his biography (read it for english):Shoot...last month they auctioned off the 1965 concert video of Keith getting electricuted at the Sacramento Veterans Memorial hall... Great video--you should have seen the sparks! They had just started playing "the last time" and as Keith stepped up to the mike to sing the chorus of "this could be the last time" when he was zapped by the shorted microphone on his guitar. He spun around , bent over halfway then collapsed onto the stage.